Heart problems

Pankaj and his father came to meet Sheba at the clinic today. They are in poor shape. We have been trying to encourage them to go back to Kerala and continue treatment there.

Pankaj does not want to go. His father - who has been trying to help Pankaj - is trapped.

Pankaj did not take his TB medications for the past 8 days. He feels that he can control things on his own. He wants his father to rent a house here in Thane so that he can get treatment here.

Pankaj's father says about Pankaj not taking his medications: "its my fault, I did not give them properly to him."

There is clearly a very unhealthy relationship going on. On one hand Pankaj has a low immunity. He is still sick - and though he has been nursed back from death - he is hardly healthy.

But on a different level - Pankaj is sick in the heart. Sick with selfishness. Sick with always having had his own way. His father has never, ever, challenged what Pankaj says or does. Even when it has lead to disastrous consequences. His father cannot. The threat that Pankaj has over him is total. Pankaj basically is saying "if something happens to me - then it is your fault."

And so the father continues to borrow money for his son's 'treatment'. They live in a fantasy world - putting up in a local lodge and watching TV most of the day - especially looking at the movements in the stock markets. In between they are angry and miserable with each other.

We will one day get a 'gold standard' cure for HIV/AIDS. One day a set of medications and interventions will be developed (we hope and pray soon) which will rid the body of the virus. For good.

But we will never get a cure of the twisted heart out of a bottle. No chemotherapy can change the relationship that Pankaj has with his father. No set of exercises can mend the deeply unhappy - and ultimately blind codependency they have on each other.

Oh that our dear friends see the miserable reality that they are in. Oh that they would take hard but real choices and move from darkness to light, from foolishness to wisdom, from bondage to freedom. These are things of the heart - but which also bring life and health to the whole person.

As the Bible says: a heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. Prov. 14.30